The internet began as a way to for scientists to communicate with each other during WW2. During 1904, when telephones first started appearing in households, author Mark Twain created a short story in which all phonelines around the globe were connected to another using a ‘telectroscope’. 60 years later, this fiction became reality when JCR Licklder, director of the U.S Department of Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), proposed an idea where computers could ‘talk’ to one another. Seven years later the first message was sent from one computer in UCLA to another in Stanford, which was meant to send ‘Login’ but only the l and o were received before the system crashed. In 1971 a programmer named Ray Tomlinson sent the first email and established the @ sign. Research into different networks were tested in the UK, US and Norway throughout the remainder of the decade. January 1st 1983, ARPNET was transformed into TCP IP otherwise known as Internet Protocol. Soon after, this became the standard for computer technology within the military. Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web and HTTP (HyperLink) while working at CERN as a way to share and manage information amongst his co workers. He later ensured that it would be made accessible to anyone with a connection, forever. In less than 50 years the internet transformed from a system unable to send more than two letters into an engine that could search for millions of pages containing billions of words in just a few seconds. The first thing that was ever purchased over the internet was a pizza from Pizza Hut.
Vannevar Bush
In 1945, Vannevar Bush wrote an article about a technology that would allow human memory to be stored and exchanged which he called ‘Memex’. Bush was an electrical engineer and inventor that had worked for the american government conducting scietific research. He had also been a member of a research team at MIT that were responsible for the designing and building analogue computers, which at the time were developed to solve complex issues involving power lines. During the 1930’s, Bush developed a Differential Analyzer that could solve advanced physics and engineering problems. His most important creation, the Rockefeller Differential Analyzer, would come a decade later and was used during the Second World War to predict the trajectory of ballistic missiles. Bush also played an important role in the Manhattan Project, which was a government research project in America that was responsible for the creation of the first atomic bombs.
Douglas Engelbart
Douglas Engelbart was an American engineer an inventor who created the first computer mouse in the early 1960’s and was also responsible for the first basic GUI (graphical user interface). The mouse was invented as a solution to finding a better way to point and click on a computer screen. He also came up with the idea for collaborative software using his experience of interpreting radar displays and took inspiration from a Vannevar Bush article to inject a graphical user interface into the computer systems. Engelbart acquired funding for his research into displaying and inputting data whereby he created the mouse and multiple window display. In December of 1968, Engelbart held a live demonstration of the experimental computing systems that had been created, many we still use today, such as hypertext, navigation, command input and graphics.
DARPA & ARPANET
The Defence Advanced Research Agency(DARPA) was established in 1958 whos goal was to research and create technologies that would aid Americas national security. This was in response to the launch of Sputnik 1, a Russian satellite at the height of the Cold War. This later developed into The US Advanced Research Agency Network (ARPNET) was created just a decade later and consisted of a network of computers connected to one another in order to exchange important research related information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
https://theconversation.com/how-the-internet-was-born-from-the-arpanet-to-the-internet-68072
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